United States Expected On Saturday

March 02, 1989|By DONALD LOEPP Staff Writer

NORFOLK — The SS United States, the 37-year-old liner on which Grace Kelly honeymooned with Monaco's Prince Rainier, is coming home this weekend.

The vessel, which was built at Newport News Shipbuilding in 1952, is scheduled to leave its berth at the Norfolk International Terminal at 9 a.m. Saturday and arrive at a pier at the CSX coal terminal in Newport News by 1 p.m., said George Flanagan, general manager of McAllister Towing of Virginia Inc.

The ship is being forced to move by Virginia International Terminals, which needs the berth for cargo ships. Terminal management has been threatening for several months to seize the ship if it was not moved.

The SS United States, which once transported movie stars like Elizabeth Taylor and royalty like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, still seems to hold a mysterious power to fascinate some people.

Charlie Rogers, a recent Louisiana transplant to the Peninsula who works for Rose and Krueth Realty, says he has been obsessed by the ship since he read a newspaper account of its troubles in January.

"It's like a guy on the road who meets a girl who just fascinates him, and he just wants to know everything about her."

Rogers has researched the ship's history, and he's trying to interest some wealthy investors in buying the vessel.

"I just drafted a letter to Donald Trump. I figure that if anyone has the money to spend on it, it would be him," Rogers said.

The short voyage across Hampton Roads is the latest problem faced by Richard H. Hadley, the Seattle real estate developer who owns the mothballed luxury liner.

Despite the problems, Hadley still plans to renovate the ship and put it on a West Coast-to-Hawaii cruise line, said George Sotir, president of U.S. Cruises Inc., a San Francisco company owned by Hadley.

"We're only moving it because the Norfolk terminal people required the berth," Sotir said.

"That's understandable. But we had hoped to have our financing in place first so we wouldn't have to move it twice," he said.

Hadley bought the ship in 1981 for $5 million from the U.S. Maritime Administration. The vessel had originally cost about $80 million to build, including a government subsidy of about $42 million.

The government justified the subsidy because the ship was outfitted with special defense features that would make it easily convertible into a troop carrier.

On its 1952 maiden voyage, the vessel set a speed record that according to the Guiness Book of World Records still stands today for a trans-Atlantic crossing - three days, 10 hours and 40 minutes.

But the 990-foot liner had been sitting empty since 1970 when its former owner, the United States Lines, took the ship out of service and berthed it at an old Virginian Railway coal pier at Sewells Point in Norfolk.

In 1984 Hadley auctioned most of the ship's appointments and prepared to have the vessel refurbished and in service by 1987.

But the West German shipbuilder HDW canceled its $125 million contract to rebuild the interior in 1985.

In 1986, the vessel was seized by the U.S. Marshal Service after a complaint from Newport News Shipbuilding over a $39,000 bill for copies of the ship's original plans. The yard had made the copies for HDW, and it lifted the lien after two weeks.

Hadley is currently involved in "very sensitive negotiations" to get financing to renovate the ship, Sotir said. He said a timetable for the work would depend on the financing.

Stephen R. Wiener, a New York real estate developer, also has a strong interest in the SS United States. Wiener said he has been trying to buy the vessel from Hadley.

"He won't sell it to me because he's in love with it. If you ever saw it or you were ever on it, you'd love it too," Wiener said.

Wiener, however, is skeptical of Hadley's plan to renovate the vessel, although Wiener won't say what he would do with the ship.

Wiener believes the ship is in such poor condition, and that it would cost so much to run its eight oil-fired boiler power plant, that no one could afford to operate the United States as a cruise ship.

Even in the late 1960s, before the Arab embargo that touched off rising oil prices, the SS United States was losing about $4.8 million a year - and that didn't include a $12 million government subsidy.

The ship was built for speed, not for leisure cruising, and it was put out of business by faster jet aircraft. It its final days the ship's 1,000-member crew often outnumbered the passengers.

Sotir acknowledged that Hadley had received some offers to buy the SS United States, but Sotir said Hadley is not interested in selling.

Asked whether Hadley was holding onto the vessel for sentimental reasons, Sotir said: "Hey, when you've got $30 million to $35 million invested in something, sentiment no longer has anything to do with it."